HomePage RecentChanges About

1st Movement - Warcraft

Original work for the most part.

The lords of Maldor run machines of war that will not, can not let the battlefields lay fallow for long: only the spoils of war will balance the constantly expanding armies most need to keep hold of their domains.

Militarily focused campaigns are an obvious choice in Maldor, the land wracked by war. This is not a war game, however, so we do not want to burden players with making the right strategic choices – just like always, the choices we want to engender are over how much the characters are willing to risk and to what gain. Right and wrong warcraft is judged on that basis.

First Victims of War

Most lords of Maldor maintain almost permanent armies, the bulk of which is formed of MILITIAS and GUARDS of infantry. The difference between the two is in whether the troop was formed by conscription or voluntarily. The military paradigm emphasizes disciplined troop action; foot soldiers are not expected to have initiative, but rather to use pre-learned maneuvers to move and fight in coordination. Militia sergeants are the best of the veterans, while guard sergeants are almost always mercenaries from the border marches where ancient tradition and terrain make the footman into the core of the army.

Cavalry has the pride of place in modern Maldorian warcraft, foremost because cavalrymen are professional soldiers with superior morale. The ones that own their own horses and weapons are called KNIGHTS, while the rest are ARMSMEN and receive their arms from their liege. Cavalry sergeants are valued veteran armsmen or knights.

The captains of all Maldorian military units are theoretically of noble blood, although foot units are considered much less prestigious and in practice often end up in the command of trusted veterans. There is not much formal careerism in the military of today; the land is much too chaotic and the armed forces of individual Lords in constant transition. The best a captain can do is to make himself and his unit gain in value in the eyes of the Lord – that is, if he doesn’t decide to lead his loyal troop out east to Ammeni, where mercenaries are paid well and respected highly for their superior fighting skills.

Quality over Quantity

Roleplayers usually have plenty of experience in running normal skirmish combats, so I won’t worry my head about those. Some other situations might require advice, however:

As can be seen, battles with many participants work exactly like normal skirmishes as far as the mechanics are concerned. The characters that actually have dramatic goals in the situation get the spotlight, and this may or may not mean that a player character gets an opportunity to influence the battle outside his immediate vicinity.

Quantity has Quality

I’ll return to those partial stakes for a bit, because they are important when the whole campaign starts revolving around what characters can and can’t accomplish in battle. Specifically, how does superior LEVERAGE affect the stakes of a battle? This is how:

There are other ways of building asymmetric, biased stakes, but the basic principle is the same: when a character doesn’t have appropriate leverage to fight the forces arrayed against him properly, he has no choice but to accept lesser stakes. This is really obvious from a cinematic viewpoint; nobody ever questions it when the hero runs from superior forces. Still, sometimes roleplayers stare a bit too intently at the dicing rules of a game and start claiming that they have some sort of right to a “fair fight” against any comers.

Now, in actual play the technique of partial stakes depends a lot on the Story Guide. A given campaign might be so superheroic that partial stakes would never come up: heroic swordsmen just up and face whole armies arranged against them, and win. However, I like my TSoY with a tad grimmer take, which is why I have crunch that actually formalizes the Story Guide judgment here: the key piece of rules material in this chapter is the SOLDIER IMBUEMENT, which says this same thing: a character with a professional Maldorian MILITARY UNIT backing him is actually unassailable on the open field by a single hero, barring magic or whatnot.

MILITARY UNITS with the SOLDIER IMBUEMENT have SUPERIOR LEVERAGE in martial conflict, which means that lone heroes automatically lose against them if they try to clash directly. This is heavy stuff in the SOLAR SYSTEM context, so it’s definitely up to you whether you want to allow this option in your own campaign. If you do, remember that “auto-lose” only means that characters can’t contest the military unit directly on the field; they can still conflict over weaker stakes such as escaping, delaying, misdirecting and so on.

Also, the basic strategy for a lesser force (and the one I’m shooting for here; it’s what they do in this sort of fiction) is to attack the unit cohesion of the military unit: units in disorder are useless as equipment. The character leading a military unit often has to choose between protecting the cohesion of his unit (by avoiding melee, for example) and actually doing anything in the battle. And of course characters can just choose other means apart from violence; a military unit is just as vulnerable to a convincing speech or major-scale magic as any other warband.

An Example Unit

This GOOD (2) guard unit of 50 men or so can just walk over lone heroes without conflict; they gain two bonus dice when fighting in closed formation. Ratings: +3 for oppressing peasants +1 for fighting a battle Imbuements: Soldier (R) Formation (V) Cost: 1 REASON and 1 VIGOR per scene.

Another Example

This LEGENDARY (4) cavalry unit can use the SECRET OF SHATTERING on other warbands. It’s an elite unit and can charge as well. However, the unit won’t fight unless the commander leads from the front with CAVALRY (V). Ratings: +3 for fighting at night against footmen +2 for fighting at night +2 against footmen +1 for marching hard +1 for fighting a battle Imbuements: Soldier (R), Charge (V), Elite (R) Shattering (V), Expert (Cavalry) (V) Cost: 2 REASON and 3 VIGOR per scene, minus expert deduction.

Making it work for you

Running combat for the sake of combat is not very interesting, so I don’t particularly recommend using this war material just because it’s there. Some players might gravitate towards power-tripping with the mechanically cheap power provided here, which is of course fine, but not the actual point; the Story Guide should know where to go from there, as simply running combat after combat doesn’t do much in this game.

I’m myself pretty fond of military science fiction after having had too much time in my hands earlier this decade and reading a bit too many paperback books by Lois McMaster Bujold, David Feintuch, David Weber and such. This literary genre has been on my mind a lot when playing TSoY in Maldor, as the military themes are similar: honor between fighting men, responsibility for the welfare of the men and the cause they fight for, obedience and contempt towards civilian authorities… Maldor is a great place for war stories of adventurous bend.

A key issue here is that soldier characters need to be challenged morally just the same as everybody else. If their war happens to be just, then there might be division in the ranks or corrupt officers; if the troop thinks with one mind, perhaps the resources might not be enough to achieve all goals, necessitating gruesome triage; if everything can be achieved, perhaps the consequences of victory are where the actual issue resides; if all else is well, perhaps the problem is with the mind or family of the soldier himself? It is not acceptable to reduce military fiction into a straightforward calculus of won and lost battles.

I’ll write more on this issue in the Chapter about Khale wherein I consider the worst war Near knows today. Surprisingly enough, Lords of Maldor are not behind those atrocities. Not directly.

Abilities - Warcraft

Melee (V)
Soldiers in Maldor are taught to fight with spears, swords and axes, depending on their role in the unit. This Ability can be used in directly violent conflicts, although it is not at its best in unarmed situations, ambushes, darkness or other exceptional conditions.
Cavalry (V)
Cavalry soldiers learn to maneuver and fight on horseback. This Ability can be used to ride well and for cavalry maneuvers on the battlefield, such as charges. A horseman stuck in close quarters still uses MELEE (V) to resolve those situations, however. Consequently Maldorian cavalry soldiers are generally expected to synergize their MELEE (V) and Cavalry Abilities.
Battle (R)
The Ability to plan and lead battles to achieve strategic objectives. A character needs a warband or more to execute such a plan, and Battle won’t protect his own person if he is attacked. Sometimes Battle can be used to win a war without conflict, should the opponent lack a similar Ability and thus be unable to prevent a defeat in detail.
Logistics (R)
The Ability concerns knowledge of the best practices of accounting and organizing major projects, such as supplying a military force on the move. It is useful for organizing large undertakings in civil engineering as well, although logistics are mostly practiced by the military sergeants in modern Maldor.

Secrets - Warcraft

Secret of Discipline
The character knows how to train warbands into military units, which count as equipment for their commanders. Make a BATTLE (R) check to train the unit into equipment, as per the SECRET OF CREATION. The commander of such a unit may be disarmed by breaking the unit’s cohesion on the field, and the unit may be destroyed (or at least scattered from the field) by normal rules for destroying equipment.
Cost: as per SECRET OF CREATION, except swap REASON and VIGOR costs.
Soldier Imbuement
A military unit with this imbuement has SUPERIOR LEVERAGE in battle against characters not backed by a warband; it wins martial encounters without conflict.
Secret of Formation
When a character with this Secret fights in closed formation with MELEE (V), he gains bonus dice equal to the warband’s Effect value, if any. When imbued into a military unit, the commander gains bonus dice equal to equipment quality to BATTLE (R) checks appropriate for closed formation fighting.
Cost: 1 VIGOR
Secret of Charge
When a character with this Secret charges as part of a warband with CAVALRY (V), he causes penalty dice to a resisting opponent equal to the unit’s Effect value, if any. When imbued into a military unit, the commander causes penalty dice equal to equipment quality to opponents resisting the unit.
Cost: 2 VIGOR
Secret of Elite
If a character with this Secret has to make a Passive Ability check when part of a warband, he gets synergy with the commander’s BATTLE (R) as per the SECRET OF SYNERGY. When imbued into a military unit, the commander can protect unit cohesion and prevent it from breaking by suffering any results that would cause such as REASON-based Harm on himself.
Secret of Warfare
The character knows how to conduct major battles with multiple units attacking and supporting each other in coordination, allowing for such maneuvers as flanking, reserves and orderly retreats. Make a BATTLE (R) check to form an army out of several military units and warbands as an Effect. An opponent wanting to disrupt the army’s chain of command has to attack this Effect to do so. An army has SUPERIOR LEVERAGE against individual warbands when it comes to direct encounters on the battlefield; only another army may resist its might directly.
Cost: 1 REASON per trained or restructured army, plus cost of creating and maintaining any Effects.
Requirement: SECRET OF DISCIPLINE
Castle Imbuement
This imbuement is placed on a dedicated defensive structure, appropriately enough. A castle might be built as equipment with the SECRET OF CREATION (ENGINEERING), or a character might come to possess one by other means. Either way, the castle imbuement provides SUPERIOR LEVERAGE to a suitable defensive force against enemy warbands, making it impossible for the opponent to attack the defenders directly. Even if the enemy has the means to try storming the castle, they will suffer penalty dice to any Ability checks to do so equal to the current quality of the castle.
Secret of Siege Warfare
The character is familiar with classical siege warfare and may thus direct circumvallation, sapping, building and moving siege machines and so on. A siege conducted with these strategies may directly attack the Effect value of opposing fortifications with ENGINEERING (R) checks. The character’s war machines allow him to use ENGINEERING (R) to support in appropriate violent conflicts.
Secret of Field Surgeon
Civilian medicine in Maldor is non-invasive and mostly based on Three-Corner philosophy. A military field surgeon works with limited knowledge, but plenty of experience: when a character gets seriously injured, the field surgeon can work to stabilize him by activating this Secret. This prevents the character from bleeding to death and prepares him for long-term care with real medicinal practice. Additionally, Pool paid to activate this Secret also counts towards natural healing as if the patient had spent it.
Cost: 1 REASON per Harm on the patient.
Secret of Evaluation
The character can find out the mechanical statistics of others by observing them in combat or training conditions. The player gets to ask one question per level of success on a BATTLE (R) check. Appropriate questions could involve ranking the character’s Pools against each other or against other characters, finding out the exact current value of a single Pool, finding out the character’s highest Ability and its level, recognizing a Secret the character used or whatever other questions the group finds reasonable; a lot depends on how the group handles this information normally.
Cost: 1 REASON
Secret of Tactics
The player gets to choose and frame the turning-point of a given simple conflict, as the character influences the situation to unravel to his benefit. In practice this means that the player gets to choose the Abilities used by both sides of the conflict, as he describes the exact moment of conflict resolution in the fiction.
Cost: 1 REASON for non-martial conflicts, or REASON equal to opposing BATTLE (R) check (if any) for martial ones.
Secret of Born Soldier
The character gains one Pool point in his current weakest Pool every time he activates a Martial Key. However, he also refreshes each Pool to one point less than his maximum for each Martial Key he has.

Keys - Warcraft

Key of Martial Honor
The character values camaraderie and virtues of his military fellows and enemies alike.
1xp: Act honorably.
3xp: Scorn a civilian viewpoint or value.
Buyoff: Compromise your honor.
Key of Martial Savagery
The character is a hardened killer whose values have adapted to the environment. Were I the Story Guide, I’d keep an eye on this one: players who don’t reflect on their characters’ actions can’t handle Keys that reward monstrous behavior.
1xp: Act brutally towards another.
2xp: Attack another.
5xp: Kill for no good reason.
Buyoff: Stay your hand.
Key of Martial Obedience
The character considers discipline the only thing that makes war possible or worthwhile.
1xp: Receive or give orders.
3xp: Obey orders in a crisis situation.
Buyoff: Disobey an order or regulation.
Key of Martial Individuality
The character is a maverick, doing things the way he wants them done, with little regard for anybody else.
1xp: Disregard normal procedure.
2xp: Disregard orders.
5xp: Save the day by your disregard.
Buyoff: Get punished for your ways.
Key of Martial Survival
The character survives incredible hazards while others die.
1xp: Get injured.
2xp: Avoid injury while others do not.
5xp: A companion dies.
Buyoff: Have a breakdown.